Cipher
by UnpreparedForAnything
Summary: "Human life is a difficult concept to grasp. If we are enhanced, are we still human? Are we alive if our consciousness still exists, but it isn't within our body? Can a human being live after they've died? These are questions that I desperately need answers to, my darling. And you, within shield, are in the perfect place to get me them." Raina to HYDRA subject Cipher.


**Author's notes/ message etc.**

 **Marvel's agents of shield and marvel in general belong to whomever they belong to. I never looked at those sorts of things cos I saw them as pointless. However – I've inserted an OC, who's already changing cannon in the middle of episode 1, season 1 (agents of shield) – imagine the rest of the seasons when I'm done. I will own quite a bit of original stuff, and happily make no money. Because I'm writing this for enjoyment purposes.**

 **Also, this will not just take place within only agents of shield. It will also span across multiple other parts of the MCU. And just the MCU. I'm not reading a bloody lot of comics just to appease people who'll say that events my OC interferes aren't canon in the comics. In other words - I haven't read no comics. Ignore the double negative. Keep MCU in mind when reading.**

 **The main diversion will occur at the end of season 1/start of season 2.**

 **Chapter 1: Unwanted**

Tanned legs, coated in a flowery skirt, walk forward through the narrow, rock, tunnel. The space is lit with sparse, artificial lights. The camera slowly moves up her body, eventually and slowly focusing on the side profile of her face. Her wildly curled, but slightly tame hair bounces with each graceful step. She pauses in a much wider open space. Builders are laying down white tiling, drawing wires and piping from the rock walls, slowly creating something that resembles a laboratory. More footsteps echo behind her. She doesn't turn.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" a voice tinged with a Chinese accent speaks up from behind her.

"No, Mr Yang. The prospect of what may be done here, is… wonderful, but something this unnatural is not."

"Hmph," A balding, somewhat tall Chinese man grunts from behind her. The grey, brittle hair that remains on his head indicative of his cold personality. He slowly saunters to her side, attempting to put an arm round her shoulders. She moves away. "Raina, darling, I am worried. You mean to use this lab to experiment with both gifted, and the centipede serum. I must admit, the latter is… low on its population count."

'Raina' opens her mouth, staring at Yang with wide, deep, brown eyes.

"Mr Yang, there was just an alien invasion – there'll be plenty of gifted for me to study – and please… do not call me darling." She cocks her head, Yang then smirks and leaves, his white lab coat billowing behind him. Raina turns to the unfinished lab, then smiles serenely.

-()-

"Urgh…"

"less complaining, more working, Serena."

A woman with naturally bronzed, tan skin sighs, rolling her eyes, and continues to tinker with a damaged computer. The image zooms out, showing a broken storefront, a massive hole torn through the front, wide enough to get a range rover through. A sign lays in the rubble to the side of the store, reading '_internet café'. The rest of the sign has been broken off. Multiple people are inside the almost collapsing building, working on things and clearing out more rubble, while a chubby man wearing a Hawaiian shirt lounges outside. The girl from before grunts in effort, pulling at computer that's lying partially within a pile of rubble, her simple wavy ponytail shaking.

"The bloody hell you doin'?" The chubby man asks her, while lighting a cigarette. She turns to him, staring at him with a frown. Her red gloved hands still deep within the rubble.

"You wanted us to remove all the storage from all of the computers, to see if anything is salvageable. There's your answer." She mumbles, a slight Spanish accent to her voice. The man shrugs in reply, breathing out a puff of smoke. A distinct menthol aroma permeates the air.

"Why don't you just do it the normal way, thought you were meant to have a computer science degree girlie."

"The normal way is currently unavailable, as our pig of a boss has us digging through alien rubble to hopefully find some of his ancient computers, and because of this, I am unable to reach the internal storage area, without completely tearing off the back of the computer." She petulantly replies to him, standing up on the pile of rubble.

"I could have you fired!"

"There's nothing left to fire me from!" She kicks at the jammed computer she's trying to reach – an audible crack is heard. She bends down, mumbling that she has no respect for someone who smokes menthol cigarettes. She buries her hand deeply into the rubble once more, to get at the now broken shell of the computer. She pulls part of it off, her denim jacket getting covered in dust from the debris that she's lying on. She throws the casing behind her, the projectile almost hitting her technically ex-boss. He doesn't even flinch, too engrossed in his adult magazine. Serena reaches down further, bare arms catching on the surrounding wreckage, and cutting her skin. She grasps at an object within the computer and pulls. She recoils backwards, pulling her hand and the object out of the broken computer. She drops it, shaking her now cut hand in pain. After a minute or two, she picks up the technology she pulled from the computer and begins to walk around to her boss.

A suited and gloved hand snatches it from her. She starts, her frustrated brown eyes snapping towards the body whom the hand belongs to. Many suited people surround the building, one engages in a shouting match with Serena's boss. She looks around, seeming mystified, but secretly angry – for she had been warned against operations like this by the rising tide, a group of freedom fighting hacktivists, for whom she occasionally worked for in the past.

"Ma'am." Her head turns to a completely bald, white male. He sports a black, wispy, goatee and is wearing the same suit as the other… agents? She thinks they are at least. He grabs her by the shoulders as if to steady her, which, granted, is a very quick-thinking action, considering all the rubble nearby that could be tripped on. "I'm agent Willis of the CIA, we think there's a potentially dangerous piece of alien material near you, therefore we need to evacuate the area." The 'agent' shows his badge, as an attempt to prove his truth to her – yet she knows that the CIA wouldn't bother themselves with a small, defunct, internet café. He's probably S.H.I.E.L.D. She leaves anyway, desperate to get away from the conspiracies, and most importantly, her old boss. She opens her right hand, hissing with pain from the cut that's now exposed to the evening air. Using her other hand, she picks up the hard drive that she picked up from the computer. Liquid drips onto her hand. She looks closer.

"Crap! Inutil!" She yells, noticing that the drive is coated in a sort of gunk. The liquid that leaked onto her hand sluggishly runs, unnoticed, into her perforated skin. She throws the drive away and runs off. No clatter from it hitting the ground is heard.

-()-

"Miss Raina!"

A man yells, his London accent strong, "Gifted project #10 is a bust! I'm sorry!"

Raina puts down the cup she's holding, while watching men in lab coat affix an object to a black male's arm.

"John…" she quietly intones. "You did well, you tried – that's all I can ask for really."

"Do I get to see my wife and kids now?" The scientist mutters nervously.

"Well of course, your work has been wonderful for the course!" Raina smiles, and waves a guard over. The guard approaches the scientist while he starts giving thanks – that is until the guard strikes the scientist in the gut. He sags, surprised by the attack. "Mr Alexi, send John here to see his wife and kids now please." Raina still doesn't look as the guard drags the scientist off. She doesn't flinch as screams begin to echo around the compound. Instead, lost in her mind, she wonders – "What if the test subject didn't want their powers to be improved?"

-()-

*clicking noises*

…

*noises persist*

…

* _SHRHHK! *_

Serena shoots upwards, leaving the sofa bed. Her head swivels, tight pyjamas ruffling as she moves. There's no-one around her-

*FZZZZT! *

"Arrgh!"

She yells in pain, clutching her ears. The noise echoes once more, resounding in her brain, and she collapses, screaming in agony, writhing on the floor of her three-room apartment – neither an internet café or the rising tide pays well. The noise halts, loosening its hold on her mind, but ringing in the background – like a persistent wasp that just doesn't stop _buzzing_ in your mind's eye. Shakily, she stands, still looking around, bewildered, for the noise's source.

She once more hisses in pain, as a burning hot agony shoots up from her hand, shocking her central nervous system, forcing her, once more, to her knees. She brings a shaking right hand to her face –

"Oh, God."

The cut from yesterday has sealed – but the clot is a silvery colour, unnatural, almost inhuman. The blue lines spreading out from it, and causing more twinges of pain, are even more so. Not because they're there – a normal infected cut can produce discoloured lines of skin – it's more the design of the lines. They're straight, ordered, as if there's a certain pattern, a certain structure to them – they almost look like a circuit board.

"What's happening to me?" She quietly whimpers, distressed, her eyes wetting with unshed tears.

'The tide – they'll know.'

She scrambles forward, not trusting her feet to keep her steady. She lifts herself onto the seat at her desk, her arms colliding with all the clutter on it due to her discoordination. Seeing double of the computer, she somehow finds the power button. Pressing it, she logs on, and then does the same process to access the rising tide's secure servers. The forum loads, and she screams. The chatter on the forums of an explosion, and a hooded man, go unnoticed by Serena, as a storm of noise descends on her mind, tearing her focus apart. For security, she grabs hold of the computer – blue lines spread into from her hand, then fade into the screen, dispersing – and yells at the noise;

" _SHUT UP!"_

It does. Serena sags, panting heavily – thinking that the issue is somewhere in her room, she staggers to the door, ignoring her kitchen completely, and she departs, the door slamming.

The sudden static on the computer clears as she goes. It reveals a screen, with a black background. On it? Neat, white script. It spells;

'SHUT UP.'

-()-

The woman in the flower dress ascends a hidden stairwell in the back of some dingy alleyway, her dress miraculously clean. She serenely steps forward, as if she has all the time in the world. Upon reaching the end of the alley he hears something whimpering. She turns to her right, looking down slightly – a girl is crouching down on the corner where the alley meets the street. She looks to be in her very early 20's. She seems to be in extreme agony, and yet there's no definite cause – other than the hands clutching her ears, almost in desperation. Raina looks in the same direction that the girl is – there's tv screens installed in a shop window, but the all read the same script. Raina doubts that the phrase "Please shut up, please!" is an advertising ploy. She looks down at the young lady once more, and murmurs, under her breath;

"You, are, _perfect_ …"

The girl doesn't hear her. Raina bends down slightly and puts a hand on the girl's shoulder. She starts, looking up at Raina, afraid, dark, eyes wide.

"You seem to be in pain…" The girl nods desperately, tears on her face. "It's from a… gift that you have; you see darling, you're unique; strange." The girl shakes in response, more tears leaking from her eyes. "Yes, your "gift" seems to be more of a curse really, doesn't it? I have a prototype that could potentially help with that, and it does need more testing on live subjects…"

"Give it to me." The girl stutters out, Raina's head snapping to her, mouth open in a simulation of shock.

"I'm not sure you want to do that, you see, it's a bit of a gamble currently – it'll either increase your quirk's strength, or it will eradicate it-"

" _Give_ it to me, _please_." The girl exposes a pale, shaking, blue-lined arm. Raina straps the centipede serum to it.

-()-

(Later on)

A black male is loaded onto a stretcher – there's grey markings on his forehead, he appears to be deeply asleep. He is then carried into a truck, a young woman watching. She leaves, walking over to a large, black, aeroplane/airplane/plane **(A/N whichever one I should use, tell me in the reviews)** that's currently stock still on a piece of tarmac. She approaches a slightly balding, slightly elder man, and opens her mouth to speak.

"Agent Coulson?"

The newly named agent Coulson turns to her.

"Yes, Skye?"

"Mike… when we were in my van, he asked me to do something strange… he wanted me to search for Serena Watts."

"Yes, and? She may just be Ace's mother, there's nothing strange about that."

"She's not. I recognised the name, and the picture Mike gave me. Serena's an ex rising tide hacker – I say ex, because she disappeared from our forums a couple of days ago. What strikes me as weird though, was when I asked Mike why, and he told me to give her the same opportunity that I gave him. I think… she's another victim of this 'Project Centipede'."

-(Marvel's agents of shield will return in a moment.)-

"Hmm…"

A tanned girl moans in pain as she holds a phone. She's sitting on a metal operating table, surrounded by clean white walls all around her – there's a metal centipede on her right arm, and blue designs cover the remaining skin on her arms. A woman in a flower dress stands in front of her.

"Serena, could you do something for me? Think of this acronym. S.H.I.E.L.D." The woman says. On the screen of the phone nothing happens, but, as blue light glows and projects from Serena's eyes, data is visibly pulled from the phone, appearing as blue light. Everything is pulled out, visible in both the open air, and within Serena's mind. Nothing is safe. E-mails and texts concerning shield are pulled on, websites are brought up, _everything_. The light remains on as the designs on Serena's arms glow brighter. "Wow… Would you mind doing me another favour? I'll do my best to make sure that the centipede destroys your gift if you do this." The girl on the table nods. "I need everything the rising tide has on S.H.I.E.L.D. Theoretically, you don't even need to leave here. From what we've observed here at the centipede project, your… abilities… are linked to the transferral of information over the internet and satellite frequencies. So, technically, you can reach the tide's best hacker's laptop from here, if you just access the forum on this phone."

The girl looks at her for a moment, unsure. She looks back at the screen of the phone, murmuring;

"Sorry, Skye."

-()-

 **Author's little thing at the end:**

 **Yes, I did the back in a moment thing. It's a good place to put cliff-hangers.**

 **Tell me what actress you like to imagine Serena as being played by. I'll edit the Author thing that people had better read, and anyone that reads this chapter after those reviews have stopped coming in will see that Serena should look like (Insert actress' name) in their imaginations.**

 **Hope you enjoy, people. After all, wouldn't want all this effort of writing only 2603 words to go to waste.**


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